


This Christmas Needs More Minty Hot Cocoa

by SearchingForMercury



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Klance secret santa, M/M, lots of fluff in general, the art of putting up a christmas tree
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 05:31:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13117068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SearchingForMercury/pseuds/SearchingForMercury
Summary: Keith and Lance have been both so busy with work and school, they've hardly had any time to really enjoy the holidays. A single free day lines up for both of them, so what do they do? Put up the tree, of course!





	This Christmas Needs More Minty Hot Cocoa

**Author's Note:**

> This is for koganelovesmcclain on Tumblr for this year's Klance Secret Santa event! I hope you like it!

After weeks of scrutinizing each other's school and work schedules, the day both Keith and Lance had free finally arrived. December was a busy month anyways, with all the school papers being due, the final projects that were worth more than most of the semester, and the rush of customers searching out last minute gifts. But they'd finally found a day that worked for them both and it had arrived with cold winds and no snow.

"I was really hoping it'd snow," Lance said, peering through the curtains. He worked retail and not only had he gotten them out of the clearance bin, but he got his 20% discount slapped on top of it. Sure, they were a bit shimmery and a dull sort of gold, but they made the apartment look a little more put together.

That was sort of what that day was about. Their first Christmas together in their first apartment. They'd been dating for nearly their entire college career, but it was the first time it felt really _real_. They were adults -- they'd gotten goddamn curtains together. Well, sort of. Lance had called Keith to ask and Keith had been a little too fussy about the details until Lance reassured him they could work with the color. But still.

"Why would you want it to snow?" Keith asked. Lance didn't have to look at him to know he was making a face. 

"To set the mood!" Lance said, turning back to his boyfriend. He didn't really need the snow, though. He'd been excited since he went to bed the night before.

Keith only made some sort of 'hmph' noise that got partly swallowed by his mug of tea. Normally he slept in a t-shirt and pajama bottoms, but the living room was "too damn cold" so he'd donned a large sweater. Lance suspected it was his, but he didn't want Keith pulling it off while rolling his eyes. He didn't mind the clothes trading -- they both wore the exact same size. 

"You know," Lance started singing. "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!"

Keith groaned. "Don't make me regret this," he said.

"Everywhere you go," Lance continued, getting steadily closer and a grin growing wider.

"I _will_ divorce you."

"We aren't even married!"

"I mean this for later," Keith replied, very matter-of-fact like. "We will get married and several years later I will demand a divorce. You will ask me why. And I'll tell you, _you know why_."

Lance narrowed his eyes. Did he keep singing or take his boyfriend, with his black hair still mussed up from sleep, seriously? But Keith's lips wobbled a little, like he was trying to keep a straight face and failing, so Lance decided to aim for those instead.

"Gross," Keith said.

"You're gross," Lance shot back before settling on the couch beside him and kissed him again.

"You fight like a kid."

"You fight like a baby."

"Like a second-grade kid," Keith insisted.

"I would be the champion amongst second-graders," Lance replied.

"You'd be the kid who runs away when things actually get serious," Keith said, as if to say, "Let's be real here, now."

Lance was most definitely the kind of person to talk big and get in serious trouble fast without realizing it, but would he run away? _Maybe_. He liked to think it wouldn't be his first reaction, though. Maybe as a second-grader he'd run, but as an adult, he would at least survive a bit by dodging. And throwing. His aim was fairly good.

"Are we going to do this?" Keith asked. "Or are we going to end up discussing the fighting capabilities of our second-grade selves? Because I'm down for either."

"No!" Lance shouted while springing to his feet. "We are going to do this! There's no way we lugged that thing up here last night for nothing."

They didn't have a very large living room -- there was enough space for a couch, coffee table, and a sort of dresser they'd found on the side of the road one day for the TV to stand on. They'd painted it over with a simple dark brown color, like coffee with only a drop of milk mixed in. Some of the drawers didn't like sliding out quite as smoothly as they wanted, but it hadn't collapsed yet. Lance had been in charge of hanging up picture frames, full of their friends and animals, of family members. Them too, of course. Keith didn't like getting his picture taken if it wasn't for something with purpose, like his driver's license, but Lance could be sneaky.

Late last night, Keith called him after coming back from work. He was downstairs, he'd said. Lance ought to come down. When he did, Keith was standing there, with a hat pulled down over his ears and a scarf covering most of his face, beside his tiny red car. Their very first Christmas tree was strapped to the roof, bundled up tight in netting.

It now stood as proudly as it could, being only an inch or two taller than them, right next to the TV. Some of the branches were up against and on the coffee table, but Lance didn't want to cut them; it would look too weird. Mutilation, he'd said, but he'd never admit to being so dramatic.

After they both took showers and Keith made the bed while Lance did the dishes, the boxes of ornaments were taken out of the closet they'd been in since Thanksgiving. Most of them were new, but a couple boxes had been given to them by Keith's parents. Lance's grandparents lived too far away -- any bulbs sent their way would probably arrive in pieces.

"First go on the lights," Keith said and handed the box over for Lance to open.

"You think one box is going to be enough?" Lance asked, picking at the tape. 

Keith waved another box at him. "Just in case," he said.

"We should have gotten the one that played music," Lance said as he pulled out the bundle of tiny lights. According to the package, the ones they bought could only do two things: blink or not blink. 

" _No_." Keith said it with such conviction, Lance could imagine himself waking up one day to find the plastic pieces of the switch controlling the music scattered on the floor. Maybe there'd even be the hammer used to smash it with.

The lights were strung up with only one major incident: getting stuck behind the tree.

"Don't push on it," Keith said. Lance wasn't sure what he was doing, because he had a bunch of pine needles trying to poke into his eyeballs, but it didn't seem like he was helping. "You'll ruin it!"

"Well I don't see any other way!"

"Cut it out! I'm thinking!"

"Think faster!"

Then the tree moved, just not in the direction Lance wanted it to.

"Pine trees don't taste good, you know."

"I'll keep that in mind," Keith grunted, his voice coming from somewhere below, "the next time I consider eating a pine tree."

Suddenly the tree was gone and Lance could breathe. He darted out from the corner, as if staying would mean making it his permanent new home. Pine needles were everywhere and Keith was already eyeing them the same way he eyed his sweaters full of cat hair.

"Okay," Lance said, straightening his shirt. "Lights are on and plugged in."

"I pulled it out a little, so we'll just push it back when we're done decorating," Keith said. He reached up to brush some pine needles out of Lance's hair. 

"After you, sir," Lance said with a sweeping gesture towards the boxes of ornaments.

It was a simple task, decorating the tree. It would have been done in silence had Lance not turned on the radio. Hanging shiny red bulbs onto branches to the various melodies of classic rock didn't exactly feel like Christmas, but Keith threatened him in a very serious "til death do us part" sort of way if Lance put on anything relating to the holidays; he'd gotten out his pocket knife and everything. 

"I hear enough of that at work," Keith had said.

It was true -- stores were putting on Christmas music earlier with each year. Lance was lucky: the clothing department he worked at had ten different songs with each song having two or three different renditions throughout the whole track. Keith's just had five.

Lance could've gone on about the evils of corporations sucking the fun out of literally everything, but that would mean letting them win. Pidge and her brother, Matt, had explained it to him before, when he'd voiced his complaints. 

When it was finally done, they stood back and watched as the lights twinkled off the shiny glass ornaments. It was a masterpiece. Lance went and grabbed his phone, taking pictures from _every_ angle (except from the corner, he was not going back), and Keith watched as he started preparing hot chocolate from the kitchen.

"Send those to me when you're done," he said.

"As always," Lance said. He swiped around on his phone until he'd sent them not only to Keith, but to his own extended family as well. A couple he fiddled with on Instagram until he decided on a filter. He was always taking pictures, though, and Keith was always asking for them. Keith blamed it on his phone ("It's old. Yours takes better pictures."), but Lance knew he just didn't want to bother.

Netflix was pulled up and a couple DVDs were pulled out of their collection. Keith ended up deciding for them both, though, when he said no to all of them except one. It wasn't an exact yes, though -- he made a kind of shrug and an "eh" to _Nightmare Before Christmas_.

"Did you get candy canes?" Lance asked as Keith handed him his mug.

"Oh right."

Lance popped in the DVD and waited for the chance to skip to the main menu. A pack of the leftover candy canes they'd used to hang on the tree was dropped down next to the tin of cookies Keith had also brought over. They'd both baked them, at some point or another. Only one set was done together, due to their conflicting schedules. Another was given to them by Keith's dad.

All the lights were turned off except the tree. Lance swirled a candy cane in his hot chocolate, watching it melt as the movie started. Keith had burrowed himself under a blanket, so Lance stole a piece of it so he could be at least a little burrowed under as well. The tree really did look good. It didn't look like the super fake magazine pictures of trees or the ones in model houses or in store windows. It had personality -- their personalities, scrambled up into one. And it would look just as good on actual Christmas morning, with presents tucked underneath it. 

Yes, a very good tree indeed.


End file.
